Holy Spirit powers evangelization, Pope explains at audience
May 22, 2013
“Evangelization is the Church mission,” Pope Francis told his public audience on May 22. “Not just of a few, but my, your, our mission.”
In a talk on the working of the Holy Spirit, the Pope said that the Spirit acted upon the apostles at the first Pentecost to “transform them into heralds and witnesses of the mighty acts of God.” He went on to identify several specific effects of the Holy Spirit.
The first effect, the Pope said, is the unity that was dramatized when people from different countries heard the apostles preaching in their own languages, in a phenomenon that reversed the story of the Tower of Babel. The Holy Spirit brings people together, the Pope said. “We must all ask ourselves: how am I letting myself be guided by the Holy Spirit so that my life and my witness to the faith might be of unity and communion?”
Second, Pope Francis continued, the Holy Spirit gives the faithful “the courage to proclaim the newness of the Gospel of Jesus to all, frankly and out loud, in every time and in every place.”
Third, the Holy Father reminded his audience, the Holy Spirit came to the apostles as they were gathered in the upper room to pray. He remarked that “a Church that evangelizes must always begin from prayer.”
The Pope concluded his audience by asking the crowd in St. Peter’s Square to pray for the victims of this week’s devastating tornado in Oklahoma.
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